Digital broadband broadcast networks enable end users to receive digital content including video, audio, data, and so forth. Using a mobile terminal, a user may receive digital content over a wireless digital broadcast network. Digital content can be transmitted in a cell within a network. A cell may represent a geographical area that may be covered by a transmitter in a communication network. A network may have multiple cells and cells may be adjacent to other cells.
A receiver device, such as a mobile terminal, may receive a program or service in a data or transport stream. The transport stream carries individual elements of the program or service such as the audio and video components of a program or service. Typically, the receiver device locates the different components of a particular program or service in a data stream through Program Specific Information (PSI) or Service Information (SI) embedded in the data stream. However, PSI or SI signaling may be insufficient in some wireless communications systems, such as Digital Video Broadcasting—Handheld (DVB-H) systems. Use of PSI or SI signaling in such systems may result in a sub-optimal end user experience as the PSI and SI tables carrying in PSI and SI information may have long repetition periods. In addition, PSI or SI signaling requires a large amount of bandwidth which is costly and also decreases efficiency of the system.
PSI/SI in ETSI EN 300 468 [V1.7.1 (2006-05)] Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB); Specification for Service Information (SI) in DVB systems, and U.S. application Ser. No. 11/443,317, entitled, Service Discovery Section, filed May 31, 2006 by Jani Väre et al. disclose conventional techniques for signaling service-discovery information.
MPEG-2 TS defines an encapsulation mechanism for data carried over DVB. Generic Stream Encapsulation (GSE) defines an encapsulation protocol for data carried over digital video broadcast specifications, such as DVB-S2, a second generation specification for Digital Video Broadcast—Satellite. The Generic Stream Encapsulation (GSE) protocol, which is under definition within the Generic Data Broadcasting & Service Information Protocols (GBS) group of DVB, provides an efficient means for encapsulating IP and other network layer packets over the generic Stream profile of the DVB-S2 physical layer.
More efficient and more robust signaling of service-discovery information and encapsulation of data for digital broadcast networks would enable faster service discovery and reduced latency thereby advancing the art.